The bust, made from bronze, is a little larger
than life-size and is set into a Portland stone section of wall. Bazalgette
appears to be wearing a jacket or coat with a collar and tie beneath it. The top
of his had is bald and he has a ruff of hair t is connected by side-whiskers to
a luxuriant moustache. When stood in front of the bust he appears to be looking
directly at you.
Beneath the bust, also in bronze, is an inscription that reads:
"Sir Joseph Bazalgette C
Engineer of the London Main Drainage System
and of the Embankment
Born 1819 Dies 1891".
Carved in the stone, above the bust is the
Latin phrase:
"Flumini Vincula Posuit"
That translates to:
"He placed the river in chains".
There is some floral carving in the stone to the sides and below the bust.
The Victorian Web website (visit
link) tells us:
"Sir Joseph Bazalgette (1819-1891) has been
described as 'a central figure in the heroic epoch of British engineering'. Like
his friend Brunel, Bazalgette was of French descent, the grandson of an emigré
tailor who had made his fortune in Mayfair. Himself the son of a naval officer,
he learnt his trade under Sir John MacNeill and at the Institution of Civil
Engineers, and set up his own practice near Parliament Square in 1842. In 1849,
after getting over a period of ill health, he was appointed assistant surveyor
to the second metropolitan commission for sewers in London. Sewage was now a
major problem: the ancient cesspool system of early nineteenth-century London
was breaking down under pressure from the massively expanding urban population,
and particularly from the new fashion for water-closets. With the celebrated
civil engineers Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel among his
referees, Bazalgette was formally appointed to the newly established
Metropolitan Board of Works in 1856 to provide an alternative.
The new chief engineer drew up his plans quickly, but his new comprehensive
sewerage system, described in its early stages as 'the most extensive and
wonderful work of modern times' (by the Observer of 14 April 1861, has lasted
into our own day. Bazalgette's most easily identifiable legacy, though, was the
Thames Embankment, where his memorial can now be seen on the wall of the
Victoria stretch. The Embankment was designed to house the large sewers running
parallel to each side of the Thames, carrying the contents of house drains and
sewers to pumping stations and treatment works. On its north side, the sewer ran
along the Thames to the famous Abbey Mills pumping station in West Ham. Had it
not been for the Victoria Embankment on this side (running from Westminster to
Blackfriars), Bazalgette would need to have routed the sewer under the Strand,
Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill, causing unimaginable chaos. The tremendous change
made by reclaiming 52 acres of riverside ground in the capital can be glimpsed
by visiting Buckingham Gate. This is the watergate to the Duke of Buckingham's
York House, now well back off the river and marooned on dry land in the
Embankment Gardens.
The Embankment nicely brings together three of Bazalgette's great achievements:
public health engineering, thoroughfare engineering, and riverside work. In
addition to the Embankment he designed some of central London's important
thoroughfares, including Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road, and also
designed or overhauled the Thames bridges, for example, the Albert Bridge. Has
any other single individual done more to change the face of London (consider the
work of John Nash), or the health of Londoners (consider the work of Joseph
Lister and others in the medical profession)? Bazalgette contributed to other
cities too, for example he designed the Broadway Bridge over the Medway at
Maidstone. He also advised on numerous projects at home and abroad.
Bazalgette and his wife Maria had ten children, and their family home was in St
John's Wood. He was knighted in 1874. In 1889 he retired to Wimbledon, where he
is buried in the churchyard of St Mary's Church (was yet another of the many
churches designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott). Roger Ellis reports that the
famous engineer was "small, reserved, phlegmatic"; but, according to Cassell's
Saturday Journal of 30 August 1890, 'his face, with its prominent acquiline
[sic] nose, its keen grey eyes, and its grey whiskers and black eyebrows, gives
you the impression of a man of exceptional power'. Did George Blackall Simonds
capture this "power" in his Embankment memorial, or only the reserve?"